Fierce Protector: Hard to Handle trilogy, Book 1 (16 page)

As usual, he was confronted with a thousand, crowding thoughts, and let each one pass like a cloud, easing along from right to left, until it was out of view. Hank’s lazy selfishness. Snapping at people in the gym.
Navy, not Army, you goddamned
. . . Eva’s gentle tongue on his. Oh, God her scent, her willing mouth, her . . .

Deep breath in
. . .
slowly out
 . . .

Is the shotgun loaded?
A slight shift in posture, the better to clear his energy channels.
Deep breath in
. . .
Hey, who are the Rangers playing tomorrow?
“Shush, dammit,” he said out loud, as he did when his unbidden cloud of cares needed an extra push away.
Deep breath in
. . .
slowly out
. . .
She’ll have flour in her hair when comes back, will need a shower
. . .
maybe we could
. . .
Shit, Zack
. . .
focus
. . .
Deep breath in
 . . .

The phone rang. “Farewell, Enlightenment,” he sighed and picked up.

“Zack? Hey . . . could you, maybe . . . come to Cheryl’s and pick me up?”

He was actually out of the door before he finished answering. “Sure, Eva, of course. Are you OK?”

“Yeah, yeah,” she said distractedly. “I just . . . erm . . .”

“I’ll be there before you know it.” Zack sprinted to his Chevy Colorado and, had the cops been around, would have incurred $600 dollars in speeding fines on the ten-mile journey.

She was standing outside Cheryl’s – under the bakery’s security light, he was pleased to see – and her car, he saw confusingly, was parked right there.

He pulled up and she gingerly got in and buckled up. “Eva, tell me what’s happened, honey.” She was ashen, and had been crying.

“They know everything,” she said, and handed Zack a crumpled sheet of paper. “This was on my windshield, when I finished my shift.”

Heart pumping, Zack unfolded the note and read it:

Dear Miss Montgomery (and her dependable friend),

We respect family loyalty.

But your brother has made a lot of mistakes.

And he needs to talk with us.

Tell him to come to church for a private midnight Mass.

First Assembly of God, Three Rivers, TX.

He was calm, almost as if he had been expecting something like this. Eva watched him read it again and then nod simply. “OK.” He called Gray and said only, “Hey, we’ve had a message. There’s a midnight meet,” and he gave the address and listened calmly for a moment. Then another simple, “OK,” and he rang off.

“What did he say?” Eva managed, her voice fluttering with fear.

“He said he’ll handle it. These bozos will be celebrating mass alone.”

“What if they . . . ?”

It was Zack’s turn to quiet her with a gentle finger to her lips. “You’re safe. Hank is extremely safe. And these people have no
idea
what they have gotten into.” The confidence of her protector, the way he simply dismissed the danger as if it were of no consequence, brought some calm to Eva’s shivering body. Zack started the Chevy. “We’re going to go home and just monitor things. It’s fine,” he said, looking at her once more. “Really. It’s all fine.” They rode back in silence, his strong right arm pulling her close, tenderly warming her fragile frame.

And all the while, a part of Zack’s mind - one sealed off from the tearful, beautiful girl leaning into him, craving his warmth – was silently forming a plan born of searing, unimaginable rage.

Chapter 10 – Wednesday Night

The noise was deafening, an assault to the ears, a ceaseless, rhythmic warfare.

Vincent was celebrating. The confirmatory text from Eddie had elevated his mood, after which his already extravagant tastes had taken a turn for the lavish. “Let’s do it all again, Ronnie,” he yelled with a mischievous grin, raising his voice above the music which pounded the room. “Same for me, same for the girls.” Ronnie turned smartly to leave but heard behind him, “And see if you can get them to keep that
fucking
door closed. I can hardly hear myself snort in here.”
After all,
he mused,
there’s no use making illicit millions if you can’t enjoy it in peace.

The jet-engine roar of the dance floor finally subsided as Ronnie firmly closed the thick, green door which hid this exclusive room. Vincent slid further down into his massive leather couch with an exaggerated sigh of relief, and then levered himself forward once more to reach the square, glass table which was the VIP room’s centerpiece.

“You wanna do another line, Vinny?” asked a tipsy, topless peroxide blonde in skimpy red lingerie.

“Bruna,” he said, hands together in appreciation, “my darling, your situational acumen is as outstanding as the surgeon who created your fabulous tits.”

“So . . . Yes?”

“Yes! Lay it out, my girl! Build me a mini mountain range, you fine, buxom strumpet.” Bruna and Jacqueline had exchanged confused glances all night, but at least this request was as plain as the powdered nose on Vinny’s face. Within moments, the over-sized line was neatly prepared and was then – just like the previous five – enthusiastically vacuumed up their client’s nose. “Yes,” he beamed, “
yes
, my beauties. This,” he announced, waving regally at the table encrusted with high-grade Columbian cocaine, “is the only white girl I care to dally with.”

Although affable enough to the management, Vincent’s VIP status depended purely on his supplying great coke at amicable prices. A small cut of the night’s take, and complimentary passes on request, sweetened the deal. In exchange, the proprietors were able to keep important guests
very happy, and
turned a blind eye to the dozens of laws Vincent broke when availing himself of his favorite back room in town. “Now that you’ve tasted the fruits of Brazil,” smiled Jacqueline, her accent thick and undeniably sexy. “You’ll never want to go back.”

“You speak the truth, my harlot of wisdom,” Vincent proclaimed, massaging his nose. “Would you care for one?” He turned, grinned and said, “When you’ve finished doing that, of course.” The full-figured Brazilian girl had laid back, naked save for her fishnet stockings, and spread her legs on the giant couch. Jacqueline’s welcome gift from Vincent was a fourteen-inch, luminous red dildo which – to Vincent’s infinite delight – was slipping wetly in and out of the redhead’s swollen pussy. “I’m not a man to interrupt art when it’s going on right in front of me.”

Somehow, Vincent managed to sense the vibration of his phone. “Although, seemingly, there are those who don’t share my view.” He began the call with a flourish of his wrist. “Speak!” Vincent watched Jacqueline’s horny writhing as she began to come while, with surreal incongruity, Curt delivered news in his business-like tone. “It pains me,” Vincent replied after a moment, “when the most polite of reasonable requests receives not even the courtesy of a reply.”

The Brazilian model orgasmed, noisily and at length, assisted by some delicate nipple-sucking from Bruna. Behind them, Marcella emerged from the bathroom, her hair tidy once more after the earlier disarray, and wearing what had been a much-needed change of dress. Glancing at Vincent, then at the arched back of Jacqueline, she smiled warmly and sat seductively on his knee.

“Curt, when you were a boy,” he paused, fixated on the show taking place on the sofa opposite. “I assume you were once a boy?” The dildo was gently withdrawn and then hungrily sucked by both women. “When you were young, did your father teach you how to deal with
disrespect
?” Three fingers had entered Bruna’s well-lubricated pussy, and she was staring with lustful expectation at the monster dildo. “Oh, well I’m sorry about that, Curt. I didn’t know. Did he deserve it?” The head of the giant red cock pressed against Bruna’s excited opening. “I’m sure he did, the rat.”

Bruna moaned loudly as Jacqueline guided the giant, red sex toy’s slow, deep penetration. “Well, did your
mother
teach you about disrespect? . . . She did? That’s excellent. She was a good egg, by the sounds of things.”

As they watched the dildo slip ever deeper inside, Marcella didn’t wait to be asked, but brought out Vincent’s stiffening penis and began a warm tongue-bath. “I think your moral compass is guiding you with assurance, Curt.” Marcella’s hands joined her mouth, slipping up and down Vincent’s shaft as it grew to full hardness once more.

“Curt, my vengeful envoy, I’m going to have to call you back in just a moment,” he said, his eyes closing as Marcella sucked him at an especially pleasing angle, “Yeah, in about . . .” he managed not to gasp with pleasure, “ten minutes?” Vincent glanced over to see Jacqueline kneeling up on the sofa, easing the dildo slowly in and out of Bruna’s pussy, her own perfectly rounded ass already made wet for him.

“Better make that half an hour.”

***

There was a flicker of recognition as Gray and Hank passed through the tiny, sleeping town of Pawnee for the third time. Theirs were virtually the only headlights around, and Gray proceeded at a measured speed, neither purposeful nor deliberately slow. He simply created a window of time and let Hank fill it with priceless information.

“So, let me imagine it in my own mind,” Grayson said, piecing together what he had learned so far. “We’ve got large and regular shipments coming in to a port, here in Texas somewhere, right?”

“It ain’t Houston, that’s all I know,” Hank repeated.

“OK, fine. Then, it gets transferred and brought up the coast?” Gray wanted to confirm.

“They drop it off in the middle of nowhere, outside some national park,” said Hank. “Little boats come out to meet it, all real quick.”

“Great. Then what?”
And this time, try to tell me something I don’t already know.

Hank fanned out his hands from a central point, like an explosion. “A little here, a little there, all in normal-looking vehicles.”

“Like the car you drove,” Hank added.

“Oh, now I see how Eva is driving your old Pontiac. The gang gave you your own car.”

“Yeah, a new one pretty often, too, but that didn’t matter, because they always found a way to track us.” Hank’s fist opened and closed like a beacon transmitting.

“Interesting. Where do they hide the trackers?”

“Dunno,” Hank admitted. “I tore that sucker apart, so I know it ain’t in my car. Tossed my cellphone too, got a new one, just in case, cost me damn near my last dollar. Still don’t know where it is.”

That’s OK, buddy. I sure do.
“Doesn’t matter. So, you’ve got a regular trip set up to Boston, did I hear that right?”

“Yeah. I did it maybe four, five times. Piece of cake. But then, on the last one, things got ugly.”

“They ripped you off,” confirmed the detective, changing lanes to pass a huge RV.

Hank pinched the bridge of his nose. “I just didn’t see it, man. Everything was normal, and then,
boom
, they’re like, ‘We don’t care what you have to tell your boss,’” he reported in his thickest Boston accent, “’we’re gonna take this, and we ain’t gonna pay you, and you can go fuck yourself’”.

“Not very nice,” said Gray, commiserating.

“So I was fixing to drive all the way to fuckin’
Illinois
, knowing that when I get there, they’re never gonna believe that I didn’t just steal it.” The memory of that helplessness seemed to sap Hank’s energy.

“But they saw that you’d been to Boston, on the tracker,” Gray countered.

“Don’t matter,” Hank said with a firm shake of the head. “Money talks, that’s it. No money, no trust. And if there’s no trust, I’m there thinking that they’d just cut their losses.” He drew a finger across his throat.

“So you wanted to put some distance between you. Get yourself to the south.”

“I hung around in a couple of places for a few days, but cash was tight, and I’m getting these texts from Curt saying that he’s gonna cut me into little pieces, and all this, and I just fuckin’
lost it
, man.”

Gray took a fatherly, placating tone. “You had a rough deal, Hank, and you didn’t deserve it. You’re doing the right thing, now.”

He was almost crying. “I just don’t want Evie in trouble.”

The Detective was nodding, giving off a sympathetic, understanding air. “You know what, Hank? I really don’t think she’s going to find herself in any trouble. Not when she’s with my buddy Zack.”

***

“I don’t really know how much to tell you,” Zack confessed as they sat together on his couch, their legs almost touching. The lights were low, the TV off, and neither of them felt like drinking, despite the bottle of wine chilling in the fridge. “Gray’s pretty high up in the DEA, and if he needs something, he generally gets it.”

“What, have they got Robocop coming in to take them all down?” Eva asked, dark humor suiting her mood.

“We’ve got something . . . better than that.” Zack kept his tone light, determined to cheer her up. “You know, when I was in Afghanistan, if we needed to take a look somewhere, and it was too dangerous to go there ourselves, we’d get some special help.”

Eva thought for a second. “Wait, you don’t mean . . .”

“Yeah.”

“One of those . . . flying robots?” she asked uncertainly.

“A drone,” Zack clarified. “Saved our lives more than once. I lost track of how many times I called one in.” She stared at him in disbelief. “The DEA has one, right now,” he explained, “watching that church and the whole area around it. There isn’t anyone who could show up there – for a meeting, or to pray to Jesus – without Gray knowing all about it.”

“Seriously?” Eva faced him, impressed and surprised. She found her skepticism beginning to give way to relief.

“Yup.
And
, they have a team, ready to help if we need them.” He gently pushed her hair behind her ears, stroking her face. “
And
, if you haven’t noticed, I’m a
badass
, and there ain’t no one coming near you tonight.”

She smiled mischievously. “Except,” she said demurely, “if I want them to.” Zack’s eyes shone intently as he nodded, holding her gaze. He found her hand on his knee; neither knew when she had placed it there. He glanced down at her slender fingers, pale and slight, willing her hand to slip an inch higher. Or more.

“It feels good,” she was saying, the words coming tentatively, “to have someone like you.” Zack’s eyes traveled back upward, deliberately slowly, from her hand, along her arm and up, wishing away the red barrier of her borrowed T-shirt, finding his gaze resting on her neckline, the baggy shirt letting him take in her collar bone, and then the gentle valley which led down between her breasts.

Meeting her eyes again, Zack read their unambiguous message:
Don’t be shy
. . .
I love your eyes on me
. . .
Enjoy me
. . . Just that simple, passive act of being gazed upon by him had her nipples tingling, firm and expectant. One hand gave his knee a slight squeeze, while the other moved up toward her neckline, halfway to showing him
just a little more
.

She hesitated while her body and mind fought each other for control.
Oh, God, is this happening now? I shouldn’t have said that
. . .
He’s going to think I’m too forward
. . .
Maybe that I’m just easy, another cheap girl throwing herself at him
 . . .

“What about,” she said, giving her racing mind, and her overwhelmed senses, time to breathe, “that bottle of
pinot grigio
?” she asked brightly.

“Great plan,” Zack agree, jumping up to find the corkscrew. If he kept his back to her while opening the bottle, he figured, she might not see that he was almost unbearably hard.

***